WOW, mainstream media covers ELECTION FRAUD analysis!

[oc2002]

I thought the 2004 stolen election had been forgoten and burried by the corporate media in some unmarked graveyard of facist America.

well, maybe not totaly dead yet!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/24/AR2005042401545.html

<snip>

Vote Fraud Theorists Battle Over Plausibility
Study Gets Blog Love, But Comes Short of Proof

By Terry M. Neal
Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Sunday, April 24, 2005; 11:27 PM

After my recent column on President Bush's popularity woes, a torrent of e-mail flooded in from angry Democrats insisting that Bush's relative lack of popularity only reinforced their belief that the 2004 election was stolen.

Regular readers are well aware that I'm not a conspiracy theorist. My natural journalistic skepticism applies not just to politicians and people in power, but to wild-eyed theories as well. The Talking Points column that followed the polling piece debunked the idea that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was the victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy.


Similarly, it strains credulity to think that there was some sort of massive, coordinated effort to steal an election. Such a conspiracy would have had to cross state lines, involve hundreds or thousands of people and trickle down from the heights of power to the lowest precinct worker.

Yet there's lots of chatter in the blogosphere, but little coverage in the mainstream media, of a study that suggests the early exit polls that showed Kerry beating Bush may have been accurate after all. The study, conducted on behalf of U.S. Count Votes, a non-partisan but left-leaning non-profit organization.

The statisticians who performed the analysis for U.S. Count Votes, led by the University of Pennsylvania's Steven F. Freeman and Temple University's Josh Mittledorf, have not been eager to use the word conspiracy. After all, they're scientists. Their job is dispassionate, quantitative analysis. But in some ways they seem to be playing a game, too, because the study clearly leaves the impression that the authors believe there was wholesale fraud in the 2004 presidential election.

The methodology and math of the study are far too complicated to get into in detail here. But here is a link to the entire study for your reading pleasure.

<snip>

[rock]

1. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist"

meaning he's ripe for the pickings by conspiracists. This is a main stay of those in consiracies, they depend on the average man finding it unbelievable.

[leftchick]

2. far too complicated so it couldn't have happened?

I am glad there was something written but it certainly could have been done better. It was a conspiracy alright and theory has nothing to do with it. :eyes:

[Stirk]

3. That Mitofsky doesn't get it. It wouldn't take a vast number

of people all working in secret to rig an election nowadays. With electronic voting and vote counting, it would actually take relatively few.

And that's his best argument against it. He even admits that he's beginning with the assumption that fraud did not take place, and so when confronted with the exit poll results, his "most likely" explanantion is that it was just one of those 1:1240 or 1:16 million oddities.

However, Bush's low popularity doesn't necessarily support the idea of vote fraud. His administration started pushing their domestic agenda very hard after the election, and it's very unpopular. Social Security privatization alone has pissed alot of people off.

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. "The bigger question to me is ...."

"The bigger question to me is what Democrats have to gain from focusing on the past. Anger over the 2000 election didn't help the party in 2002 or 2004. And even though Kerry has claimed that voter intimidation did occur in some places, not even Kerry or his top aides and advisers have glommed onto the USCV report."

Why he doesn't 'get it' is a bigger question to me. Democrats are tired of having elections STOLEN and then told to 'get over it', accused of being crazy conspiracy theorists, and labeled traitors among other accusations.

Why doesn't he 'get it' that the same company doing these exit polls somehow made 'mistakes' for the US elections; but, in other countries the very same company is applauded as being proof that elections "were not free and fair."

:eyes:

[rodeodance]

5. well, i suspose people can take a bite if they are intersted. In the

meantime-seems to me that this Terry M. Neal--can now say--Well, I did cover the story!! I did not much like his smurky tone.



.....People on the right will cry bias because I even acknowledged this report. People on the left will cry bias because I didn't endorse it. Rather than tell people what to believe, I prefer to let people decide for themselves. And some people on both sides will say I'm the one who's weasely because I don't take a position.

The bigger question to me is what Democrats have to gain from focusing on the past. Anger over the 2000 election didn't help the party in 2002 or 2004. And even though Kerry has claimed that voter intimidation did occur in some places, not even Kerry or his top aides and advisers have glommed onto the USCV report.

Blumenthal, who has worked for Democrats for two decades, said in an interview that it is unfortunate that the debate over an implausible conspiracy might overshadow the real debate over things like voter suppression, intimidation and disenfranchisement. Blumenthal says his disbelief in the mass conspiracy theory doesn't diminish his belief that Republicans have attempted to suppress votes, at times.

"In order to advocate for a change you shouldn't have to buy into that five million votes were stolen," Blumenthal said. "I'm not saying that there is no possibility that there wasn't a vote stolen here and there. But do the exit polls present a case for fraud. I don't think so."

[SoCalDem]

7. "Focusing on the past" is sometimes unavoidable

We did not focus on the past (2000) and we got MORE "odd" results in '02 (Georgia comes to mind)..and we did not "focus" on the past (02 and 00) and in 2004 we got our asses giftwrapped and handed to us, even though "conventional wisdom" and our lying eyes told us that "our guy actually won".. So if we buy the argument that manipulation BY republicans of machines MADE BY republican-owned companies.,..,.,created results that turned polls on their heads, and made NO SENSE...AND turned us into an effective mibority...our party has been out of control for 5 years, due to fraudulent schemes. Look at the damage that has been done in those 5 years.. Is it worth it to "look back"..Hell YES!!!

[MontageOfFreedom]

9. Actually, reverse the argument and this is true.

Republican hubris has been responsible for fraud. And you are correct when it is pointed to being the source of the 2004 selection results.

http://www.flcv.com/summary.html

[seabeyond]

6. study clearly leaves the impression that the authors believe

wholesale fraud in the 2004 presidential election.

could they have come to that conclusion and belief, because they ran the numbers. they see that is exactly what is suggested by the numbers they ran. an overwhelming million to one this could happen

is this the hugest duh in the who wide world

the signifance for me. this reporter is so hard trying to be fair, but simply cannot wrap his mind around the fact it could be done. he states this. he says, would have to be massive fraud

what he isnt seeing yet, or getting, it is a small number of people

[tex-wyo-dem]

8. It seems a lot of people just don't get it...

Including many of our Dems in congress...

1.) I would take merely a handful of people at the most to switch massive amounts of votes if they had remote access to the tabulators.

From what I've understand, it appears the tabulator and EVM software is laughably insecure...any amateur hacker would have no problem.

2.) It would take even fewer people to write secret software for the EVMs or tabulators to flip votes under certain conditions...of course we can't see the software because our elections are now privatized and the code is "trade secret" to the companies developing it.

To truly understand the scope of this one needs some knowledge of how software, telecommunications and networking work...and that's the problem, most of our politicians are lawyers and have no understanding of the issue. Of course, most reporters are in the same boat...